


Can't Help It

by stoprobbers



Category: Doctor Who
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 17:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1655843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoprobbers/pseuds/stoprobbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>-You mustn’t do that. -Can’t help it, I’m a born lever-puller.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Help It

_Hey, I wonder what would happen if I pulled this lever  
-You musn't do that.  
_ _Can't help it; I'm a born lever-puller._ — Yellow Submarine

She's been dreaming a lot lately. 

Ever since she Landed, Rose Tyler has been re-living her life through vivid flashback in her dreams. It took a dangerous amount of time for her to sleep again, period, but once they made her she found herself helpless, lost in what felt like an infinite riptide. From a distant, rational place — perhaps the only rational place left in the shattered heap of her — she knows this is how her mind is processing the greatest trauma of her short life. In that distant, dim place she is incredibly proud of herself that she's processing at all; she's not fallen completely apart.

She's asleep now in a utilitarian bed in a utilitarian room in a utilitarian motel in utilitarian little town in rural Sweden. She is almost definitely sure they're supposed to be going to Norway. She's not sure where in Norway, but he's never been the best pilot.

She anticipated that when her dreams got to her time with the Doctor, it would get rough and probably more than a little weird. The greatest experience of her life, the greatest love of her life, ripped away against her will in a split second… She'd prepared herself as best she could, as zoned out as she'd been. Around the time she was stuck reliving Jimmy Stone, she started having a recurring nightmare about the lever in the ghost shift room; that's what she thought was happening when he first spoke to her.

She was holding a lever. She could feel the cold metal and the metallic roughness on her palms but she felt a million miles away; in her body but not in control. She barely registered the presence around her, so adamant about something she couldn't quite remember, transfixed by what she held. That texture… She'd pulled open the front door of the Torchwood building the other day and nearly thrown up in the lobby. Well, perhaps that wasn't just the feel of the door handle. It took her a moment to register that she was kneeling and that someone was talking to her. She looked up and the Doctor was standing there. A yellow rope was tied like a harness over his suit, and plastic bags with brightly colored liquid hang from it. He's talking to her and the sound of his voice makes her muscles go to jelly.

"Hold that lever!" he ordered, and jumped down through the hole in the ceiling/floor. She was on New Earth. She felt so far away because Cassandra is in her body. She was in a dark elevator shaft. This was not the ghost shift room. This was not that lever. A wave of nausea passed over her but she tried not to freak out. The dream of their very first meeting, of that rough hand and Northern accent and those bright, gorgeous blue eyes had been the worst night of her life; she'd woken half out of bed, puffy and dehydrated from sobbing, throat raw from shouting and begging. Her mother and Mickey had been perched on the room's loveseat, alert like little birds whose nest had been spooked. Since then she'd been able to get it under control a bit, at least to the point where she woke alone and in mostly one piece. She had gotten used to the routine of letting the initial panic pass, which is why she jumped out of her proverbial skin when another Doctor appeared, crosslegged on the ceiling/floor beside her. She dropped the lever. In the dream it didn't move.

 "Rose," he said, and he sounded so broken. He looked exhausted, and  _old._ His face was lined and shadowed, his eyes bloodshot and red. She recognized it instinctually as her own face, while at the same time her heart broke into two giant, bleeding pieces.

"Doc–" The name stuck in her throat. A tiny spark lit in his eyes.

"Rose!" He sat up a little straighter and she echoed him unconsciously. He kept repeating her name, sounding a little more hopeful each time until she wasn't sure if it was the only thing he could communicate across the void or the only thing he could bring himself to say. She wondered how long it was for him. Then he reached out for her hand and she reached back and their fingertips were just brushing and then she was catapulted back to Ward 26, waking up in the Doctor's arms, the dream Doctor's, catching her as she fell. She looked up, confused and stunned. 

"Hello," she said, as she had.

"Hello," he replied and gave her that goofy grin. Then, in a Northern accent, "You just can't help it. You're a born lever-puller."

"Wha–" she started and then woke up.

It kept happening, her haggard Doctor showing up and whispering her name throughout their memories: pressed into a corner down the hall from a doorway to 17th century France, in Magpie's store, in the Ood room in Sanctuary Base 6. And that's how she figured out she was supposed to follow him; that's how she trusted him to guide her, piloting skills bedamned. 

Tonight she's in Sweden and in that horrible room. Her stomach feels like lead even as her dream body takes the MagnaClamp on the left. The ghost shift starts and they are pulled horizontal, giggling and squealing and completely ignorant of what's to come. Of her death, because that's what she did that day — she died. And this time, instead of a new Doctor appearing, the one across from her suddenly wakes up.

"Rose!" he says, as always, but he looks so terrified. She knows she looks the same. "Oh, no–"

Well, he  _can_ say more than her name, it seems. It feels worse knowing he just can't bring himself to. The cursed Dalek flies through the air and knocks her lever out of place. She knows what's going to happen next.

 "Rose!" he cries and sounds so broken. "I didn't want–This wasn't–I can't–"

She drops her clamp, catches the lever, pushes with all her might. She hates this, she hates everything about this, she wishes she was in the Void or dead, really and truly dead, so that this pain, this grief, this  _knowing_ that he was gone and she'd never, could never again… The lever locks. Her grip tightens. It's all for nothing.

"Rose,  _Rose_ ," he's begging now and she wonders if he knows everything she knows because this is a dream, she's already trapped, this is just in her head. The one place she can't escape. "Rose,  _please_ , come find me. You  _have to come find me_."

The room goes oddly still, despite the vacuum trying to drag her into its depths.

"I'll always find you," she replies as if he's stupid for thinking otherwise. It's some time before she fully understands the depth of that vow.

"Rose…" he says again as the last of her fingers starts to give under the pull of the Void and she thinks he might mean  _I love you_  and she knows she means it back when she answers:

"I can't help it. I'm a born lever-puller."

In Sweden, Rose Tyler wakes up.


End file.
